Sicily, with its traditions, its
multi-millennial history and its landscapes is a land of contradictions, even
in its geographical aspect, able to alternate sometimes radically different
landscapes.

The cinema throughout the years has provided a
quite interesting and equally varied picture of the Island and its people.
Sicily has been an endless source for settings and stories that so often have
drawn on its richest literary heritage. Indeed, still maintaining their own
identities, these two expressive forms have been increasingly related in
depicting this beautiful Island.

Cinema in Sicily has produced unforgettable
works of art starring the most celebrated International and Italian actors
dealing with a range of themes and genres: from love to mafia and comedy.

The best Italian and International filmmakers
here found the perfect setting for their stories. Distinguished names like
Visconti, Germi, Rosi, Taviani and recent oscar winners Tornatore, Benigni and
Amelio, through their works remarkably contributed to promoting the culture of
this country across the world.

Salvatore Giuliano, 1962, by Francesco Rosi, about the famous
bandit life, starring Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff and Pietro Cammarata. The
movie was entirely set in Sicily, mainly in Montelepre, Palermo, the bandit’s
hometown. The Madonie mountains form a major backdrop to the movie, notably, the
Montedoro, where the bandit had his safe shelter. Some scenes were filmed in
Castelvetrano, Trapani, where Giuliano spent his last years and was found dead.
Places were carefully chosen, as the director himself admitted, in order to
gain an emotional involvement in the events narrated.

Il Siciliano (The Sicilian), by Michael Cimino, 1987, was
to be a later, more fictitious adaptation of the story. The movie, featuring
Christopher Lambert as Giuliano, was filmed in Sutera, Caltanissetta, this city
being much alike Montelepre and the author wishing to maintain confidentiality
about the production.

Genoa’s director Pietro Germi (1914-1974) set
some of his movies in Sciacca, Agrigento, specifically 1949’s In nome della
legge (In the name of the law) and 1964’s Sedotta e abbandonata
(Seduced and abandoned). Several locations appear on both the movies resulting
in an interesting intrigue of scenes and stories.

Oscar Prize Nuovo Cinema
Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore was shot in 1988. The film showed Tornatore’s affection for
cinema, it emphasizing the power and the magic of this form of art while cross-refererring to such celebrated
works as La terra trema and Catene (Chains). A number of shots,
especially those referring to the protagonist’s childhood, were filmed in the
lovely Cefalù, Palermo.

L’avventura (The Adventure), 1960, by Michelangelo
Antonioni, was filmed in the Aeolian Islands, at Lisca Bianca. The island,
first the meeting place of the two protagonists, soon becomes a place of loss. A wealthy
woman (actress Lea Massari) disappears while on a yachting trip there; her
lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her best friend (Monica Vitti) begin an affair in
the resulting vacuum.

The Ragusa area has also been a favorite
setting for filmmakers. Roberto Faenza’s Marianna Ucria, in 1996, an
adaptation of the omonymous novel by Dacia Maraini, was mostly filmed at the
Villa Fagotto, near Chiaramonte Gulfi, a scenery that would reappear in Nicola
Simone’s Colpo di Luna starring Nino Manfredi.

Mention must be given to the many Sicilian
actors that through the big screen have contributed to make their Island famous
across the world.

The earliest of them is undoubtely Catania’s
comic actor Angelo Musco (1872-1937). He scored popular successes playing as a
fool in commedia and operetta and acted in several Nobel
Pirandello’s plays or dramas: Liolà (Liola), La giara (The oil
jar) and Il berretto a sonagli (Cap and bells). Among his movies are: L’eredità
dello zio buonanima, 1934, by Amleto Palermi and produced by Capitani Film;
L’aria del continente, 1935, by Gennaro Righelli, inspired by Nino
Martoglio’s works; Fiat Volutas Dei, 1935, by Amleto Palermi; Pensaci
Giacomino, in 1936, by Gennaro Righelli, drawn from Pirandello’s
masterpiece.

Giovanni Grasso was another leading Sicilian
actor (1873-1930). He grew up in a family ofpuppeteers. Especially remembered is his acting in Sperduti nel buio,
a silent movie by Nino Martoglio in 1914. The movie is about two vagabonds, the
blind Nunzio (Grasso) and Paolina (Virginia Balistrieri), a girl disinherited
by her father, the Duke of Venice, and exploited by gangsters. Nunzio
eventually manages to save the girl.

Turi Ferro (1921-2001) is one of our much
praised actors. Mainly known as theatre actor he was also committed to cinema,
playing in Un uomo da bruciare by the Taviani brothers and Valentino
Orsini in 1965; Malizia (Malicious) by Salvatore Samperi in 1973; Il
lumacone, 1975, by Paolo Cavara also starring Agostina Belli and Ninetto
Davoli; Il Turno, 1981, by Tonino Cervi also starring Laura Antonelli,
Vittorio Gassman and Paolo Villaggio; in Novella Siciliana, 1988, by
Wolf Gaudlitz also starring Hilmar Thate and Massimo Bonetti.

Unforgettable is Palermo’s comedy team of
actors composed of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, giving life to over one
hundred movies.

The cinema owes much to Sicilian literary
tradition, that to some extent has influenced all the film makers here
mentioned.

Giovanni Verga, an outstanding Sicilian
novelist and playwright, and primary exponent of Verismo literary
movement, have inspired many films. His Storia di una Capinera was made
into a movie by Giuseppe Sterni in 1917, by Gennaro Righelli in 1945 – starring
Marina Berti, Claudio Gora and Tina Lattanzi – and, more recently, by
Zeffirelli. Most famous is the cinematographic adaptations of La Cavalleria
Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry). The action passes in a tiny village near
Catania in Sicily. Turiddu, conscripted, having served in the army for two
years, returns to find that his promised wife, Lola, has forgotten him and has
married the carter, Alfio. Out of spite, he woos an orphan girl in the village,
Santuzza, and betrays her. Lola, jealous, receives him again as her lover and
he deserts Santuzza. She, about to give birth to a child, begs him to marry
her, for she still adores her betrayer, when he scorns her and goes off again
with Lola. The girl, mad with jealousy, hastens to tell the carter of the
relation his wife has with Turiddu; a barbarous duel with knives follows, and
Turiddu is killed. The work was made into a movie twice in 1916, by Ubaldo
Maria del Colle and by Ugo Falena. Two more adaptations followed in 1924 by
Mario Gargiuolo and in 1939 by Amleto Palermi starring Isa Pola, Carlo Ninchi,
Doris Duranti and Leonardo Cortese.

In 1948, Luchino Visconti adapted Verga’s
well-known novel I Malavoglia (The Malavoglia Family) into his La
terra trema (The earth trembles), telling the story of ‘Ntoni Valastro and
his family of fishermen.

The nobel prize Luigi Pirandello became
increasingly interested in cinema. He wrote articles and held numerous
conferences on the subject. Director Walter Ruttmann based his Steel on
a subject by the writer. Liolà was made into a movie in 1964 by
Alessandro Blasetti and starred Ugo Tognazzi,Pierre Brasseur and Giovanna Ralli; Kaos was adapted in 1984 by
Paolo and Vittorio Taviani who casted Margarita Lozano, Massimo Bonetti, Franchi
and Ingrassia. Steno filmed L’uomo, la bestia e la virtù casting famed
actors like Totò, Orson Welles and Viviane Romance. Il fu Mattia Pascal
(The late Mattia Pascal) was adapted by Marcel L’Herbier in 1925 and by Mario
Monicelli, more recently in Le due vite di Mattia Pascal.

Vitaliano Brancati, a well-known writer,
critic, playwright and screen writer, is another important son of Sicily. Born
at Pachino, Siracusa, he publishedthe
tale Il vecchio con gli stivali, later adapted into the well known Anni
difficili by director Luigi Zampa, shot in Modica and Ragusa, starring Ave
Ninchi, Umberto Spadaro and Massimo Girotti. Zampa also adapted Brancati’s Anni
Facili in 1953 and L’arte di arrangiarsi in 1955, showing one of the
earliest examples of political and social satyre. Noteworthy is Paolo
il caldo from a novel by Brancati, directed by Marco Vicario and starring
Giancarlo Giannini, Rossana Podestà, Gastone Moschin, Marianne Comtell, Ornella
Muti, Fermi Benussi, Neda Arneric, Riccardo Cucciolla, Adriana Asti, Vittorio
Caprioli and Lionel Stander. Finally, there is the celebrated Il
bell’Antonio, starring the unforgettable Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia
Cardinale and Pierre Brasseur, directed by Mauro Bolognini, 1960. This is a darkly ironic portrait of
Sicilian machismo. A Sicilian playboy becomes temporarily impotent on
the night of his wedding, and has to suffer the scorn and ridicule of his
neighbors.

The famed Il Gattopardo (The
Leopard) by Luchino Visconti ( 1906-1976) was drawn from Tomasi di
Lampedusa’s novel and starred such actors as Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and
Claudia Cardinale. The movie is a portray of the Sicilian society at the time
of the Italian Unification in 1961. It tells of the social and political
changes of the time through a wedding proposal involving a poor aristocratic,
Tancredi (Alain Delon) and a well-off and gorgeous girl of the rising
middle-class, Angelica (Claudia Cardinale). A picture of the Sicilian society
of the day.

Director Pietro Germi is remembered for his Divorzio
all’Italiana (Divorce, Italian style) and Il cammino della speranza
(The Path of Hope). The former was shot in 1962 and starred Marcello
Mastroianni, Daniela Rocca and Stefania Sandrelli. At Agramante, a small
Sicilian town, a bored upper-class Sicilian (Mastroianni) has grown tired of
his wife and would rather marry his attractive cousin (Sandrelli).
Unfortunately divorce is illegal in Italy. Therefore, he decides to find a
lover for his wife and murder her out of jealousy. An hilarious farce about
love and marriage.Il
cammino della speranza (The path of hope) was filmed in 1950 and starred
Raf Vallone, Elena Varzi, Saro Urzì and Franco Navarra. It is adapted from a
novel based on an actual postwar event and follows sulphur-mine workers on
their superhuman journey from Sicily to a new life in France.

Director Francesco Rosi has chosen Sicily for
many of his films. He was first an assistant director of Luchino Visconti in La
terra trema. His earliest works deal with social issues and show astyle that has its roots in neo-realism. Besides the already mentioned Salvatore Giuliano,
are other important works: 1972’s Il caso Mattei (The Mattei affair),
starring Gian Maria Volontè, Franco Graziosi and Luigi Squarzina, is about an
inquiry into the life and mysterious death of socialist magnate Enrico Mattei,
and the disappereance of journalist Mauro De Mauro, in a context of power games
and corruption.

The mafia movie Lucky Luciano was shot
in 1973 and starred Gian Maria Volontè, Edmund O’Brien, Vincent Gardenia and
Rod Steiger. The film examines the life of the infamous
gangster Luciano after serving nine of his 50-years sentence in the 1930s and
1940s, after which he was pardoned and deported to Italy. Once back in Italy,
Luciano travels to Naples, where he finds himself under a continuous ten-year
investigation by narcotics investigator Charles Siracusa (who played himself).

1976’s Cadaveri Eccellenti
(Illustrious Corpses) from Sciascia’s novel Il contesto, features Lino
Ventura, Alain Cuny and Tino Carraro. The movie is set both in Sicily and Rome and tells of interesting social
and political intrigues. The police inspector Rogas investigates suspicious
murders of illustrious attorneys and magistrates. He himself is killed as he
directs his investigations towards right-wing conspirators seeking to
destabilize the government.

Benigni’s Johnny Stecchino (Johnny
Toothpick) in 1991, starring the director himself, Nicoletta Braschi and Paolo
Bonacelli, is a funniest and celebrated comedy that stars Benigni as
Dante, a naive bus driver who is dead-ringer for Johnny Toothpick, a notorious
mafioso on the lam and under the gun. When the beautiful Maria, Johnny’s
drop-dead gorgeous wife accidentally discovers her husband’s twin, she schemes
to switch the two men.

In 1972, director Lina Vertmuller
filmed Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore (The seduction of Mimì),
starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato and Agostina Belli. The film is a hilarious
political and sexual farce. Carmelo Madocheo (Giannini), called Mimì, a Sicilian laborer, refuses to
vote for the Mafia’s candidate; consequently he loses his job, his wife, and
his home. His efforts to defend his honor produce complex comical results. Vertmuller
was very fond of Sicilian subjects. Also worth noting is her 1978’s Fatti di sangue fra due uomini a
causa di una vedova (Blood Feud) starring Sofia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni
and Giancarlo Giannini.